Robot tools are often monitored (e.g., tracked and/or visualized) for remote control applications, telepresence robotic applications, robotic program debugging, and various other robotic applications. For example, in many embodiments, a tool positioned at the end of an articulated arm of a robot is monitored by a camera capable of moving to change its field of view (e.g., a pan tilt unit). In order to monitor the robot tool and/or ensure that the robot tool is maintained within the field of view of the camera, computer vision and image processing algorithms are generally employed. It should be appreciated that computer vision and image processing algorithms and techniques may be significantly computationally intensive and/or result in delay associated with a large number of real-time computations.